So I had a lucid dream this morning using a combination of WBTB and meditation. The lucid dream was short but I think I have the pathway to Natural Lucid Dreaming down. NLD meaning "without some elaborate Technique of the Month". You meditate before bed in the night for 20 minutes. You wake up in the middle of the night, record any dreams and meditate again for 20 minutes. Go back to sleep. That's it. To meditate is to become present to the moment. It's okay if you are thinking or chatting with yourself. Meditation is not supposed to be anything profound, spiritual, or deep. The fact that you are aware of the present moment for the majority of the session is good enough. TL;DR meditation is very simple and easy so don't over think it. Just let it happen.
21st May 2021 Not a dream: Couldn't recall any dreams for this day made a note that I tried thinking about lucidity in general and about recent dreams where I might have had an opportunity to become lucid. I had hoped to go through the recall of several dreams in my head but ended up getting a bit stuck on this; eventually my focus drifted and I must have fallen asleep. 22nd May 2021 Fragment: (left recall a bit late) Some bit in a town in the style of my old home town, hilly. I'm with some dream friends, a woman and a man both younger than me. They are getting rid of some stuff, office chairs or sofas? Some other bit, I'm with someone but can't recall who. Entering some kind of hive building which is in the middle of an otherwise normal city (larger than any I've been to in waking life, NY style). The entrance to the hive part is high up, but I think I just run up it. Inside, there's a sort of rounded off eight point star inner shape and there are cocoons or eggs, they're dark? And the place is dark overall but there's some kind of light. Everything is very geometric. I shoot or open the eggs by getting too close? DRG-like creatures come out and so on. I end up leaving but with an intent of returning later. For whatever reason, the creatures are unable to follow me out. Some other part, I'm in a building with mom. Don't recall much of it but it's kind of a semi-circular inner area? Like a control room around a central and cylindrical room. It's generally dark. There are other people around, we're walking through the place?
19th May 2021 Fragment (remembered this while in the car and thinking about money): I'm somewhere, meeting back up with dad. I'm giving him several old pound coins. I deliberately picked old ones instead of newer ones to give him and I remember ruffling through something (a cloth bag?) to get them. 20th May 2021 Fragment: I'm in a version of my old town. It's dark, night time, but no street lights or anything? I meet up with D (childhood friend), an accidental meeting. I follow him into a building, climbing some stairs that lead up to the ground floor where the entrance is. The building is the one opposite of the cafe on the main street. (transition) We're then inside his apartment, but like the building, it's not the same as it would be in waking life. There's a lot of stuff everywhere and I make some remark on how it's comforting to know that other people can also have this issue. It's mostly clothes, clean but unarranged and piled up. I forget what we talk about, but we discuss something. It's dark here too, but more like dawn than night. There's a cold ambient light. Then, I think I need a wee and I go somewhere in the flat. I go into this sort of secret compartment behind something and I forget all about needing a wee as I climb down a wall ladder comprised of metal loops in the wall. Then this part has a connection to the lift shaft. It's dark and goes a long way down in there. I look away? The rest of the room is some kind of cubical underhang thing on the building. There's a barred window in here at some two or three feet away. It looks much brighter on the outside, like it's daytime there. I look again into the lift shaft and the aperture is smaller than before now. I'd have to crawl first to fit through now and drop down. A mouse, two mice come out. They look clean but I don't trust them. One gets close and for whatever reason I still reach toward it with my hand. It gets on top of my hand and bites me. It doesn't hurt a lot but I feel worried about getting an infection. I'm angry at the mouse but quickly forget about it. I go elsewhere, not sure where, and there I eventually wash my hands in a bathroom. (there was a lot more to this dream but I couldn't recall much) Notes: - Before I fell asleep on night preceding the 19th fragment, I was again thinking of a general thing of Occipitalred's thoughts on dream awareness. - It's ironic that only just recently I told Occipitalred I couldn't remember any dreams about money but then just a day or so before I had indeed dreamed about the subject of money in some form. - I like to collect old and non-circulating coins, even if they are actually fairly recent. It seems odd that I would give dad the older ones rather than the newer ones, especially since in the dream there was some subtext of money being required to pay something banal. - The dream with the mouse is one of a few recent-ish ones where a rodent has appeared.
I'm lying on a sleeping pad on the floor with a bunch of other people. We are about to sleep but suddenly a really tall man, about 2 meters tall, comes in and starts to hunt us. I run up some stairs and keep on running outside in the dark woods. I am able to return to the building and we are safe now. Tove is prominent in the dream and has a strong positive aura. Notes: It was not a nightmare but more like a game. I'm home and looking up through the window in the kitchen upstairs. I think about how the dream is soon going to end and that triggers lucidity. I go to the sink and turn the water on. I try to do some water bending but it doesn't work at first. I get some insight and suddenly know how to do it. I take my right thumb next to the water and move the thumb to the side. The water follows. I take the water with telekinesis to the next room where mom sits on a chair. I form the water so that it looks like a glass and give it to her. She is shocked when her hands go through the water glass when she tries to grab it. I go to the window and try to punch it so that I can fly outside but it won't budge. I have to open it instead which takes some time. When I'm done I fly outside and it's pretty dark. There are some tall and round buildings I have never seen before. I try to fly up and I am able to. I want to touch the stars but when I reach a certain height I feel that the dream is becoming unstable. I fly down again to a big dome house. Some kind of white particles follow me and I feel energized. I fly in a circle and more white particles appear. I feel really happy and the flying is going perfect. I'm with Gustav and he complains about a SC2 map that is really hard and that he doesn't understand how you are able to win with only zealots. We enter the map and defend one entrance each. I have some marines and a tank and I'm able to protect my entrance the first round but Gustav is struggling. We lose and Gustav starts to build some kind of fort with Lego in my brothers room. I join him. He asks me if I remember what he told me and I tell him I do. I say that he told me to use my time wisly and only to do important things. He is happy and says that I have understood him.